Anyone have any tips to save the Gondians?

[Forblaze]

The fight on the lower level of the Steel Watch Foundry. There are 5 of them and 3 people have detonators. I was able to do this on my first playthrough with Black Hole, but this time I don't have any illithid powers and would prefer not to get them just for this.

Annoying complications:
-They resist banish
-They don't try to stay inside of invulnerability spheres. When enemies move into the invulnerability sphere, they'll even exit it so that they can catch more of the now invulnerable enemies in their AoE spells
-They constantly run by enemies, eating as many attacks of opportunities as possible
-I can't target allies with command, preventing me from ordering them to flee
-They never disarm detonators, I have to do it
-Mage Hand can't disarm the detonators, so I *have* to use someone's full action each time.
-They completely ignore Steel Watcher detonations, and in fact run into the AoE in an attempt to hit them more while they're in the middle of detonating

Anyone have any other ideas?

[wei270]

dimensional gate, doimate person, and telekinesis. give you pretty much full control over you allies. some time you just need to be like uncle sam, you need to reach out your strong hand to gently guide your aliies in the right direction.

[Forblaze]

Alright, I managed to do this after an hour of trying.

Turn 1)
Karlach uses Corpsesgrinder's special attack to knock the closest group of guys closer to the group further back
Gale with pre-casted Haste double casts level 5 fireball at the group of 3 Gondians.
Main character with pre-casted Haste deactivates both detonators
Wyll with pre-casted Haste double casts level 5 fireball at the group that Karlach bunched up, careful not to hit the Gondians.

The group has now been thinned enough that the Gondians can survive (with some luck) a round of combat

Turn 2)
Regular DPS round, Gale and Wyll manually end their Haste after using their second action.

Turn 3+
Trigger the Steel Watcher Explosions, Gale or Wyll banish the steel watchers before they explode

Pre-casting feels a bit cheesy but I don't think it's possible to keep the Gondians out of combat and they just can't survive it.

[radubradu]

i killed them all myself, now they have embraced eternal peace and all their troubles are gone. i consider them saved

[Ruffio]

Did replay that one quite a few times. Quite annoying, like herding kittens in a hurricane.